When Does the Bible start being translated literally?

Faith & Science Conversation
43

@Mincaesar

We don’t all believe “…God is outside of our [natural] laws…”

But getting back to the question regarding at what point should the Bible start to be taken literally:
There is a well known Egyptian writing about the Battle of Kadesh. The Pharaoh writes about
his heroism in glowing terms… and he talks about how the Gods were there helping him.

How much of THAT is to be taken literally?

  1. The general description of the battle seems accurate enough (though still on the side of exaggeration).
  2. So must we conclude that Horus and Amend were ALSO there?

This is a problem between you and God. Do you really think Samson had magic hair?
Do you really think Jonah spent 3 days in a fish?

Easy enough to have an opinion on these. But what about the 12 tribes of Israel? Do we really
think each tribe was founded by one of 12 sons of a common father? Personally, to me, this seems
most unlikely!

Then there’s the account of the Serpent Pole that Moses set up. By definition, since Moses died
outside of the Promised Land, the Serpent Pole had to be carried around for centuries… making
quite an impression on the people.

And then in 2 Kings 18:4 we read that King Hezekiah “…removed the high places, and brake
the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses
had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called
it Nehushtan.”

Personally, I think this is most unlikely as well! I think the pulling down of the Snake
Pole happened either during the Babylonian invasion … or maybe even when the Persianized
Priesthood came out of exile and started setting up shop in Jerusalem. Zoroastrians
hated snakes - - and considered destroying them to be a good deed.

This would have been the logical time for a sacred furnishing by a mythic Moses to
have been taken down.

Virtually every part of the Bible has to be tested for reasonableness. That is always the way
in the pursuit of truth.

Sincerely,

George Brooks

45

Hi gbrooks… Yes you got me there, since it is my curiosity and need to search out the truth that first initiated this unexpected journey of mine, from creationist 100 percent with absolutely no give, to now, an evolutionist who is a Christian 100 percent. And so I understand your position of clarifying what parts and pieces are real or not, in the Bible. A search for truth. If there is a problem between myself and God, then the problem lies with me, not Him obviously. Perhaps my problem is like most people in that I want things to fit logically, into a neat and tidy rational story, but when I start going down that road it leads me nowhere, to more and more questions, like the very last one at the end of that road, for me which is “Who created God then?” The only thing I can do with it all inevitably is believe. For right now I am going to stick with Brad Kramer’s answer.

47

@Mincaesar,

Very good! Is this the answer from Brad Kramer that you liked?:

“It’s also important to remember that ancient people, including the Hebrews, thought that the events of creation happened in a special sort of time that differs from regular, ordinary time. I suspect that for them, any effort to understand what “really” happened during creation in a scientific sense would have been seen as impious. It just wasn’t the way they thought about the world. In other words, there’s good solid interpretive reasons to look at the beginning chapters of Genesis differently than the Abrahamic and post-Abrahamic narratives.”

I like this answer as well. It takes the pressure off thinking Genesis must be interpreted literally in all ways.

Sincerely,

George Brooks

48

I have a question that may be relevant here… Who are the sons of God that came unto the daughters of men, in Genesis Chapter 6 verses 1-6 ? Have always wondered about that.

49

@Mincaesar

Isn’t the Bible fun?
I would nominate the phrase “Sons of God” as another imaginary scenario that had spiritual ramifications to the Hebrew.
I’ve heard that they were supposed to be God’s angels, right?

Sincerely,

George Brooks

50

Nobody really knows.

1 Like
61

I’m not sure if this is a very good criteria or not, but a methodology I’ve started to use for determining the likelihood of a described miracle versus a fanciful literary device is the following:

In the case where Eve has a conversation with a a snake and Balaam has a conversation with a donkey, what do they have in common? Both show no sign of shock or surprise that they are having a lengthy dialogue with an animal.

Compare that to a situation in the New Testament. Mary get’s conceived by the Holy Ghost and when Joseph finds out about it he doesn’t believe her story. He thinks of the most decent way he can privately divorce her, and then an angel communicates with him in a dream, saying that she is telling the truth.

The first two instances where talking animals are involved show no signs of incredulity. While the Virgin Birth has Joseph as a skeptic (who wouldn’t be in that situation?) and then a believer (a divine intervention in a dream convinces him). Which one shows signs more obvious signs of the miraculous?

My methodology might be rather simplistic but I think it’s a good start. Like Eddie has said, however, I would be very careful with using “the silliness test” as a method for discrediting miraculous events in the Bible. To the majority of atheists a Virgin Birth and a Resurrection (after three days) can seem quite silly — even to certain Christians it can feel silly, even though a Christian believes it.

The supernatural is much more prevalent in the Old Testament than the New Testament however. My methodologies involve finding biblical trends and patterns (there are many instances where a woman entreats God for a child because she is barren, for instance). What is the overall attitude, intention, and methodology, of the miracle in question? How does it relate to the story, and also (and this is important) what is the purpose of the miracle in question?

Some people, for instance, spend large chunks of time analyzing certain miracles, in the scientific sense, and very little time analyzing the miracle in the biblical sense. Joshua’s Long Day is a good example. Many debate the proposed cosmology in the story, and little time analyzing the purpose of it — the Bible, for instance, puts much more emphasis on the reason for the miracle rather than the scientific explanation.

“And there never was a day like it before or after it — that the Lord listened to a man. For the Lord fought for Israel.” <<< this is what the Bible emphasizes. We should therefore put our emphasis on this, and less on whether or not the Bible is proposing a Geocentric or Heliocentric universe.

-Tim

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62

@TimothyHicks

You write:
“I would be very careful with using “the silliness test” as a method for discrediting miraculous events in the Bible. To the majority of atheists a Virgin Birth and a Resurrection (after three days) can seem quite silly — even to certain Christians it can feel silly, even though a Christian believes it.”

Agreed!

And that is why I feel more free to restrict the “silliness test” to just the Old Testament. In fact, I’m pretty exuberant with that test in the Hebrew
texts!

I think there are other ways of dealing with the literalism of the New Tesatment.

George Brooks

64

Thanks to God. I never thought you would.

George

66

@Eddie

You write:
“I said something about not tying Christian apologetics to neo-Darwinism. Christian apologetics
– concerns how Christians argue the case for Christianity to the non-Christian world, not how
Christian scientists argue the case for evolution to other Christians who don’t accept evolution.”

And yet, in your prior posting you tried to assert something a little different:

“American TE/EC proponents have for the past 20 years been desperately trying to readjust
Christian theology to harmonize with a scientifically outmoded conception of how evolution works…
… people like Ken Miller, Darrel Falk, Karl Giberson, and Francis Collins … still think in the old
way. They aren’t current.”

It would be easier to avoid reading into your words, if you weren’t so antagonistic with the
words you actually use.

The challenges of “readjust[ing] Christian theology” has almost nothing to do with which
synthesis of Evolutionary science the founders of BioLogos are discussing.

George Brooks

67

And when you boil ice it is called sublimation, going directly from a solid state to a gas state. Lots go things sound impossible or silly until you see them demonstrated.

1 Like
68

Read my post, Biblically Inerrant Theistic Evolution. The Bible is literal from Genesis 1:1. Genesis 1 describes the creation of the earth and humanity over billions if years. Genesis 2 describes special creation of a local Eden where our representatives Adam and Eve prove God’s goodness and disprpve the apparent contradiction of the creation of a world with pain in it. Noah’s flood was a local flood. I go through the various bible verses commonly cited by YEC’s and show how the verses do not actually require a young earth. Also, it is important to note that the only portions of the Bible that are have left behind geological/biological evidence that can be scientifically inspected are Genesis and the Flood. The rest of the bible describes historical events that are more suited to investigation by archaeological methods or manuscript investigation etc. For instance, if you were trying to determine what I ate for lunch on November 2nd, there is no experiment that you could devise to answer that question. You would be better served by going through my trash (archaeology) or by reading my diary (manuscript research) or by asking me. So, once you can biblically explain the Flood and Creation, it becomes impossible to disprove any of the other miracles in the Bible. Also, just because something is untestable, that does not mean the question is not valid; I really did have lunch on November 2, but what I ate is beyond the abilities of experimental science to answer.

69

Genesis describes Abraham negotiating with Philistines about 800 years before the Philistines even existed in Palestine. The Philistines didn’t move in and break Egypt’s grip over Palestine until around 1130 BCE. Genesis is the collection of stories written to provide a “back story” to Exodus.

George

70

Interesting. What Philistines and where?

71

Here’s a verse that will help you place these purported Philistines …

Gen 21:34
And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines’ land many days.

72
73

Nick,

You are obviously a man of Great Faith… because you will take ANY reason to explain bad history in the Bible.

I don’t believe there is ANY thing in the bible that can’t be “explained away”.

George